Jackpot - Western Wanderings - slot machine collection - Brief Article

Sunset, April, 2002 by Peter Fish

RENO--You don't get to choose your first childhood memory, and mine is more raffish than I usually admit. I am 4 and standing in the lobby of a Las Vegas casino. The occasion would have been a family car trip; the time, the late '50s--the haute Vegas era of feathery showgirls, sharpies in Sy Devore suits, and Sammy Davis Jr. at the Sands. Given these surroundings, any number of items might have captured my attention. But what mesmerized me were the slot machines--glittering robots with chrome arms and spinning eyes. I gaped. I yearned. I wanted one for my own.

No such luck. My parents, who had been briefly distracted searching for a place to get a club sandwich, yanked me away from the machines of iniquity. But the memory lingered, which is why my pulse raced when I met Marshall Fey at his Liberty Belle Saloon in Reno.

Fey is the Herodotus of the one-armed bandit, the Gibbon of the dollar slot. His book, Slot Machines: A Pictorial History of the First 100 Years, is magisterial; his collection of slot machines, housed at the Liberty Belle, is among the largest private collections to be found anywhere. But then he has a family legacy to uphold.

"My grandfather Charles Fey was from Bavaria," Fey says as he shows me around the Liberty Belle. "He left at age 15, ended up working in a British shipyard, and earned enough money to come to San Francisco in 1885."

In San Francisco, Charles Fey had a brainstorm. Slot machines had already begun to appear in that city and throughout the nation. But they all required a live human attendant to pay out jackpots (a term first popularized by the machines). In 1898, Fey devised a three-reel device that paid out automatically This inspired bit of tinkering helped him launch his own company and created the template that slots would follow for the next 75 years.

When you visit the Liberty Belle, you can see one of Charles Fey's original machines--called the Liberty Bell for the bell decorations on its reels--along with its contemporaries and descendants. There are floor machines, 6 feet tall and graced by portraits of Admiral George Dewey and Mozart. There are machines from the 1930s--the decade Fey calls "the golden age of slot machines"--so art deco-sleek they seem ready to fox-trot with Fred Astaire. There are machines that tiptoed around antigaming laws by dispensing gum (from which come the familiar lemon, orange, and cherry symbols still used today). There are slot machines carved to look like grizzled prospectors and others carved like perky cocktail waitresses. Together they form an amazing monument to American avarice and invention.

Charles Fey never made a fortune from his breakthrough, largely because the state of California refused to issue patents on gaming devices. Still, he has an assured place in history. And while Marshall Fey's mother never approved of the family business--"She would never mention the fact that her father-in-law invented the slot," says Fey--he knew its worth. When he started a restaurant, he named it after his grandfather's machine, then began to scour old casinos, saloons, and junk yards for antique slots he could restore.

Today, slot machines are nothing if not big business: Last year Nevada casinos' 213,191 slot machines earned $6.23 billion before taxes. Modern machines have abandoned Fey's reels for microprocessors and random number generators. But Fey thinks the secrets of their appeal remain the same. "Anyone can play them," he says. "And for a small amount of money it's possible to win a lot."

Hearing those justifications, I slipped a dollar into one of the video poker games Fey keeps around so customers can try their luck. (The antiques are for admiring only) Five minutes later I was $10 poorer. Before visiting the Liberty Belle, I might have felt like a chump, but not now. After all, I was following a century-old American tradition.

The Liberty Belle Saloon & Restaurant. 4250 S. Virginia St., Reno (775) 825-1776